Summary. It was Fifi Swain, the parlourmaid, and I set it down plainly at the outset: she struck Nan Pringle in the dark of the back passage not from spite nor for gain, but because Nan meant to carry a word to the Colonel that would have cost Fifi and her brother the only roof and the only character they had in the world.

The Reckoning. The method wants little unravelling once the hours are laid straight. Fifi left the dining room at 8:05, giving out that she went for the second remove. She did not go down the service stair — Mrs Gow, who keeps that stair in her eye from the kitchen table and misses nothing on it in the dinner hour, is plain that Fifi never came down, and that the dish was fetched instead by the kitchen girl and passed up at the stair head. What Fifi did instead was walk four paces into the back passage, where the gas had been turned to a bead earlier in the evening, as is done on carrying nights, and wait. Nan came through the baize door on her way to find the Colonel. Fifi took up the brass door-porter from the stair foot, struck once from behind, and set it down again where it fell. She then went up, took the dish from the kitchen girl, and was back in the dining room by 8:14 as though she had never left it. She did not search the body. The half-sheet with her own initial written twice upon it lay under Nan the whole while, slipped from the glove, and Fifi never troubled to look for it — which I had near passed over, until I saw what it meant. She had not struck to recover a paper. She had struck only to stop a mouth. The paper was no part of her purpose, and so it was left where it fell.

The others fall away on plainer grounds than that. Zane stood at the sideboard pouring the whole of the nine minutes, under four pairs of eyes that never left him; he was never in the passage. The Colonel was called to the gun-room at 8:03 over a jammed lock and stayed there in his man's company until the cry went up. Lavinia never rose from her chair — the Colonel watches her mouth when she speaks, being deaf on that side, and swears she did not stir. Quill went out at 8:02 and was met returning by Cousin R at 8:07, the two coming back together, remarked upon by the table; neither had an unwitnessed minute in the passage, only a witnessed one in the hall. Effie was seen in the morning room at 8:12 by the maid and found there still at 8:20. Xerxes and Aziz sat at table from the soup to the alarm and rose only at the cry. Wat Frew never left his chair, and in any case had written Nan off as a poor mark after she twice refused to sell him what she knew; there was no quarrel left alive between them. Gaunt was at the gaol with a condemned man from six o'clock, under two warders' eyes, and never came near the house. None of them had the nine minutes. Fifi did.

As to why. She had no quarrel with Nan Pringle, and little regard for her beyond the mild contempt one keeps for a faded woman who minds other people's business. But Nan had minded it too well. On Thursday, in the blue room, something passed between Lavinia and Zane that the household did not discuss and does not fall to me to name; Fifi had carried the notes between them, as her mistress required and her place obliged. Nan saw the coming and going twice, wrote it down with both their initials, and told Mrs Gow on Saturday that she meant to speak to the Colonel after Sunday dinner, and that it would cost two people their places. She did not say whose. She did not need to. Fifi and her brother came into that house six years ago without a character to their name, and the Colonel's good word is the whole of what stands between them and nothing at all — he dismissed a kitchen maid in October for less, and gave her no reference to carry away with her. Nan rising at 8:05 to find him was, to Fifi, the end of everything she and Zane had. She went into the dark passage to stop it, and she did.

It is the third this twelvemonth, by my count, that I have been called to that house, and I do not expect it to be the last. Fifi Swain is charged with the wilful killing of Nan Pringle, and the file may close.

When all's said and counted, the deed it was done,
and Fifi the answer, when answer was none.
Poor Nan lies quiet, a candle, a knife,
the tidiest exit from Cairnholm and life.
The lesson is here, should we trouble to learn —
but the cards, being cards, will be dealt a fresh turn.